Newborn Babies Cry in Native Tongue

From their very first days, the cries of newborns already bear the
mark of the language their parents speak, scientists now find.

French newborns tend to cry with rising melody patterns, slowly
increasing in pitch from the beginning to the end, whereas German
newborns seem to prefer falling melody patterns, findings that are both
consistent with differences between the languages.

This suggests infants begin picking up elements of language in the womb, long before their first babble or coo.

Prenatal exposure

Prenatal exposure to language was known to influence newborns. For
instance, past research showed they preferred their mother's voice over
those of others.

Still, researchers thought infants did not imitate sounds until much
later on. Although three-month-old babies can match vowel sounds that
adults make, this skill depends on vocal control just not physically
possible much earlier.

However, when scientists recorded and analyzed the cries of 60
healthy newborns when they were three to five days old — 30 born into
French-speaking families, 30 into German-speaking ones — their analysis
revealed clear differences in the melodies of their cries based on their native tongue.

Imitating Mom

The way babies imitate melody patterns relies just on a command over
their voiceboxes they had before birth, instead of the more advanced
control of their vocal tracts they need for vowel sounds. As such, they
can begin mimicking their mothers "at that early age," said researcher
Kathleen Wermke, a medical anthropologist at the University of Würzburg
in Germany.

"Newborns are probably highly motivated to imitate their mother's
behavior in order to attract her and hence to foster bonding," Wermke
said.

The researchers conjecture that the development of spoken language is rooted in melody,
and that these findings support their idea. "Music and language might
have co-evolved for a certain time during evolution and share a
primordial form of communication system," Wermke told LiveScience.

The scientists detailed their findings online November 5 in the journal Current Biology.

Charles Q. Choi is a contributing writer for Live Science and Space.com. He covers all things human origins and astronomy as well as physics, animals and general science topics. Charles has a Master of Arts degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia, School of Journalism and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of South Florida. Charles has visited every continent on Earth, drinking rancid yak butter tea in Lhasa, snorkeling with sea lions in the Galapagos and even climbing an iceberg in Antarctica.